William Blair expands fundraising talent with three hires

William Blair is growing its private capital advisory business at a rapid pace as raising private equity funds remains a challenging prospect and secondaries activity ramps up.

The investment bank, which launched its private capital advisory in 2022 with the hiring of ex-Credit Suisse executive Mike Custar, is among several newer players in the space. Other mid-market investment banks expanding into similar strategies include Guggenheim Partners, Baird and Harris Williams.

William Blair will announce later this morning the hiring of three executives to its private capital advisory group: Daniel Budde, hired as a senior director based in Boston; Tom Lewis as a managing director in London; and Silke Wood as a director in Zurich.

Budde will focus on primary fundraising and work on the secondaries advisory side as well. Budde previously worked at Manulife Investment Management, as a senior managing director overseeing the growth of its private equity fund portfolio practice. He was on the investment committee for mezzanine lending, primary and secondaries fund investments, equity co-investments and GP-led secondaries.

Lewis previously worked at Moelis & Co, where he worked as an executive director for the firm’s private funds group and led EMEA coverage. Woods most recently worked as director of investor relations for Endeavour Vision, and before that she was head of sales for UK and Nordics and global head of consultant coverage at Tikehau Capital.

The three join a roughly 40-person private capital team across seven offices that has expanded rapidly since the formation of the group, which is led by former Credit Suisse veterans Custar, Jerome Wallace and Brian Williams. The group works on both primary fundraising and secondaries advisory services.

The team is populated with executives from Credit Suisse, many of whom left over the past few years. UBS took over Credit Suisse last year.

Wiliam Blair’s private capital advisory group hired at least three ex-Credit Suisse executives: Matthew Flynn, who most recently worked at Campbell Lutyens; Hudson Collins; and Sprague Von Stroh. Other ex-Credit Suisse executives on the team include Jeff Hypes and Andrew Viehe.

The team already has nine fundraising mandates, including Graycliff Partners V; Ascend Partners’ second fund; Pritzker Private Capital Fund IV; and the debut fund of ex-Vista Equity senior executive Brian Sheth, Haveli Investments.

William Blair’s private capital advisory team will have a narrower focus in terms of the amount of fundraising mandates, compared with Credit Suisse, which at times would have more than 30 processes in the market at one time.

Fundraising continues to be a struggle as LPs downshift on their commitment pacing in the face of overallocation issues and sluggish distribution activity. “That’s one of the reasons we’re being so selective in what we take on,” Jerome Wallace, co-head of the private capital advisory group, told Buyouts in an interview.

So far this year, the outlook remains challenging, though there are some signs of potential easing of the tight market, according to Brian Williams, co-head of the private capital advisory group. “There are some green shoots of allocation availability that we hadn’t seen in 2022 or 2023,” he said.

Update: This report was updated to add more names of members of the private capital advisory team.